I talked with Mike about this recently, but I was surprised to realize that my entire family blogs. Brother, Sister, Mother, and of course myself. I started back in January 2002, my Sister started a couple years later, my Brother a year after that, and my own Mother soon thereafter. I find it pretty amazing that we all are doing this blogging thing. It’s a great way to keep up on family especially when all three siblings are in different time zones. I’ve been able to learn so much about my family that (due to my poor phone skills) I probably never would have learned otherwise. So congrats and thanks to my fam for taking part in the blogging revolution! In any case, back to a little vino, work, and the UConn game - go Huskies!

I’ve been pretty busy with work lately. I’ve gotten some great opportunities and have been thinking a lot about what I want to do when I grow up. I’ve also been thinking about how I’ve been able to achieve what I have. Most of that can simply be attributed to my father who instilled in me some of the best work ethic one person could ever hope for. This has also led me to think about success and how one defines being successful. The truth is, everyone defines it differently. I suppose it’s what is important to you that determines how you can be successful. Which leads me to ask, am I successful? Sure. Can I be more successful? Of course. But what is it that defines success for me? Well that’s frequently a moving target, but here’s what a few other people think.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer

Success… it’s what you do with what you’ve got. - Leroy Van Dyke

Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things. - T. S. Eliot

I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom. - General George S. Patton

You must do the thing you think you cannot do. - Eleanor Roosevelt

There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way. - Christopher Morley

We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

To freely bloom - that is my definition of success. - Gerry Spence

You will find the key to success under the alarm clock. - Benjamin Franklin

And on that note…I’m going to bed!

Leo: Now is not a good time to photocopy your butt and staple it to your boss’s face. Eat a bucket of tuna-flavored pudding, then wash it down with a gallon of Strawberry Quik.

I totally agree…I’m off to find the nearest 24-hour Kinko’s. Let me know if you want a copy…

As I walked out of the Safeway (yes…I’m in Seattle again) tonight sporting my week’s supply of Gatorade, I caught a foldable table out of the corner of my eye with stacks of rectangular shaped boxes and a sporty mother and daughter team standing behind them.

“Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?”, the young girl blurted out.

I paused.

Visions of peanut butter patties, thin mints, and classic shortbread cookies danced through my head like a heroin addict making a score. My mind had already turned toward the table and it was a simple matter of making my body follow.

But it resisted. The burn of a good workout yesterday picked my right foot up and moved it forward in a straight line. Then the left. And the right again. My brain screamed “What are you doing, you fool?! Those are Girl Scout cookies!”.

My body laughed and said “Hey buddy, you’re gonna be lying out on a beach in a bathing suit by the end of the week…what do you want to do?”.

Much to the relief of my waistline, my brain conceded and the Girl Scout cookies have slipped from my grasp until next year.

So if you’re thinking about hopping on the Dan Ryan (90/94 South out of Chicago) in the near future…don’t. It’s a simple as that. At least, not until 2008. Chicagoist reported that the Dan Ryan is undergoing repairs (including shutting down half of the lanes) to improve capacity.

In other words…a six-eight lane highway that is currently handling double it’s intended capacity will be cut in half for two years in order to ultimately increase the capacity. Joy.

More information can be found on Avoidtheryan.com.

On a side note, did you realize that Chicago has some of the best tap water in the country?!

The Slanket - The Best Blanket Ever.

This thing looks pretty cool. I came across it on one of my favorite sites for interesting and useful stuff. Just in case you need an idea for my birthday…hint hint

What happens when you want to snuggle with a friend under The Slanket, though? Is it only a single-user Slanket? Or does one person get each arm hole? Perhaps one person manages the arm holes, while the other gets all…slankey.

So I was in San Fran this past weekend visiting Mike D, or as it will be known for the context of this post: “The City of Eating”. Yea, we ate quite a bit. I got in late Friday and we hit up a local bar for a quick drink where I fashioned my cell phone as illumination for the menu in the dark interior.

After a couple more drinks than intended, Saturday morning was late in coming. Not to be stopped, we headed across the Golden Gate bridge and went to a great restaurant called Sweden House Bakery and Cafe. We got a nice seat out by the bay, where the seagulls and pigeons were very close neighbors: SF-March2006/IMGP2353 They weren’t kidding either. As soon as the couple next to us left, a seagull and a few pigeons clattered onto the table nearly knocking over some glasses to get…a packet of butter?! Crazy birds.

Then it was back to the Golden Gate. Feats of engineering never cease to amaze me. Did you know that there are 27,572 galvanized wires in one main cable?
SF-March2006/IMGP2354

Even if you didn’t know, you probably don’t care. He’s one of the few pictures I have of people for those of you that don’t care for the significance of the 7,650ft that consists of the length of one main cable. ;-) SF-March2006/IMGP2364

After that, we drove around various parts of San Fran and saw everything from anatomically-correctenhanced robots to super steep hills and the stairs going up those hills. SF-March2006/IMGP2374SF-March2006/IMGP2375SF-March2006/IMGP2381 SF-March2006/IMGP2385

phew What a busy day! So what better to do after a draining day of site-seeing than take a nice long nap, grab some dinner, and dance the night away. SF-March2006/EvFlyer_173

I must be getting old, though, as for the first time ever I wore earplugs at the club. And in all reality…I am very glad I did. It sounded louder than normal and even with the earplugs in it was still pretty loud and more than enough for me to get lost in the beat. I probably still wouldn’t be able to hear today if I hadn’t worn those earplugs.

Sunday, as is intended, was a day of rest. After (yet another delicious) breakfast, we went and saw Ultraviolet. The effects were great, but it wasn’t really my style. The best part was the opening scene, which…ultimately didn’t have much to do with the rest of the movie but was just really cool!

Well I think that’s the highlights. Thanks, Mike D for a great weekend!

I spent the past weekend with Mike D in San Francisco - what a great time. We did some touristy (Golden Gate) and non-touristy (Haight & Ashbury) things and then hit up a club to dance into the night with a couple friends. It’s been a long time since I went out like that and it felt good to be able to let loose and have a good time. I hope to be able to post a little pictorial of the whole event, but we’ll see how late I manage to stay up tonight. I think the thing that amazed me most was the crazy streets. I’ve been to downtown San Fran several times, but not to the surrounding neighborhoods where the hill grades are utterly relentless.

And thanks to Stacey for the awesome idea of taking advantage of my extended time on the west coast to visit.

Over the course of the past month or so, I’ve been receiving a call from this 800 number (800-946-0075) every couple days or so. I always pick up with my standard ‘Hello, this is Damon’ and get nothing. Then the line goes dead. I’ve tried calling it back, but merely get a ‘the number is out of service’ message.

This has been going on for a while and it’s been starting to annoy me. So this morning, the phone rang again from that number. I picked it up and gave a very annoyed ‘Hello’. Finally somebody on the other end spoke and said “Fortino?”. Shocked into standard operating procedure, I said that no, they had a wrong number and they hung up on me.

This goes along quite nicely with the new number I just got for my work mobile phone.

It’s quite a nice number and apparently it was owned by somebody else not too long before I acquired it. How do I know that? Because I keep getting calls from people asking for Mike. When I explain that this is no longer Mike’s number, they mention that he owes a lot of people a lot of money and I should expect even more calls. Awesome. Way to go, Mike.

Update: Man, Mike musta really done a number. I just got some sort of automated call from Citibank…hehe.

Well it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, mostly because I’ve been extremely busy with work. 2006 has definitely hit hard and I’ve spent most of it on the road so far. I’ve hit up Sarasota, Miami, New Jersey, Denver, and most recently Seattle. …yea, I think that’s it.

So what do you do when you’ve been away for a while? Take a nice night out. :-) Stacey got all dolled up and we went out to the Kinzie Chophouse for some quality steak. It was a great time. And what better to do after a full meal and a glass of red wine…pass out.

Seattle was pretty cool - definitely a nice landscape. The best part was on the way back to the airport when Mt. Rainier pretty much raised out of the mist - all 14,410 feet seemed to appear out of nowhere. It was truly amazing and makes me look forward to warmer weather when I can get out and do some camping and hiking again. Flying out of Seattle was quite scenic as well - the route took us over a portion of the Rocky Mountains that I had never really seen before. Stuff like that makes all the travel worth it, but it’s definitely not something I could do for the rest of my life.